...why all the parlimentary trickery & sleight of hand with
reconciliation and
deem & pass, not to mention the nearly 3/4 of the country that says NO to the bill??
Remember the
Constitution folks? Specifically
Article I, Section 7??
House Democrats unveil latest changes to $940 billion health bill, move toward voteBy Paul Kane and Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 18, 2010 House Democrats unveiled the latest changes to compromise health-care legislation Thursday and overcame a key procedural hurdle after President Obama postponed a trip to Asia so that he could remain in Washington for a crucial vote expected Sunday.
Congressional budget analysts said the emerging compromise between House and Senate Democrats would cost $940 billion over the next decade and expand insurance coverage to 32 million more Americans. Their preliminary report suggests the two-part legislation would bring the nation closer to universal health coverage than at any time in its history.
After the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported its figures, the House turned aside a GOP effort to thwart Democratic plans to move the health-care reform package through the chamber Sunday using a parliamentary procedure known as "deem and pass."
According to the CBO, the measure would make insurance available to an estimated 95 percent of non-elderly citizens by dramatically expanding Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, and offering tax credits to an estimated 24 million Americans who would otherwise find it difficult to afford coverage.
The program would be paid for by
slicing nearly $500 billion from Medicare and other federal health programs, particularly a privately operated insurance plan known as Medicare Advantage. Democrats also propose taxing, for the first time, the health benefits of some people who receive coverage through employers. That proposal focuses on the most generous policies, which economists say are helping to drive health-care costs skyward.
The bill -- unveiled Thursday and likely to be voted on Sunday in the House -- also would increase Medicare payroll taxes for wealthy families, in part by applying the tax for the first time to investment income.
The cost of expanding coverage would exceed $200 billion a year by 2019, the CBO said. But new revenue in the package, combined with savings from program cuts, would outpace the cost of coverage, reducing the federal deficit by $138 billion over the next 10 years. The savings would continue to accumulate in the decade thereafter, the CBO said, eventually slicing around $1.2 trillion from the nation's budget gap.
In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf cautioned that the estimate is preliminary and could change as the agency reviews the final element of the health-care package, a series of revisions to the $875 billion health-care expansion that was passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve. House leaders hope to approve both measures Sunday.
But for the moment, Democratic leaders pronounced themselves positively "giddy" about the numbers and about the reaction from rank-and-file Democrats, who were briefed on the package Thursday morning.
However, Democrats appeared to lose a former supporter of the initiative Thursday, as Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.) told reporters he was "firmly" against the legislation because the compromise weakened provisions he previously supported. Lynch said he was scheduled to speak with Obama on Thursday afternoon to give the president a last chance to change his mind.
House Democrats nevertheless succeeded Thursday afternoon in beating back a Republican bid to force a vote on the Senate health-care bill separately from a series of fixes to the legislation. The House voted 222 to 203 to shelve a Republican resolution that would have required a separate vote, which Democratic leaders want to avoid through a parliamentary maneuver known as deem and pass that would allow the Senate bill to be considered passed once lawmakers approved the package of fixes.
Twenty-eight Democrats joined Republicans in supporting the effort to force a vote.
Among the items buried in the bill that Democrats unveiled Thursday afternoon was a provision related to student loans that may be aimed at winning support from the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).
Democratic aides told reporters that the Bank of North Dakota would be eligible to continue issuing student loans with federal guarantees of repayment on default -- an exception to a measure that would eliminate the program effective July 1, cutting out financial middlemen and expanding the federal government's direct-loan program. The aides justified the exception on grounds that the Bank of North Dakota is the only state-owned bank in the nation. Obama decided Thursday morning to postpone his March 21-26 trip to Indonesia, Australia and Guam so that he could remain on hand to rally Democrats for the key House vote Sunday and votes in the Senate next week. The trip will be rescheduled for June, the White House said.
Earlier, Pelosi called the package "a triumph for the American people in terms of deficit reduction." Obama said the CBO report makes clear that his health-care initiative is "the most significant effort to reduce deficits since the balanced budget act" that heralded the economic expansion under President Bill Clinton.
The CBO report comes after days of House Democrats tinkering with the health-care bill. Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said the effort was delayed by cross-Capitol efforts to make sure the provisions the House released Thursday would survive a maze of parliamentary objections awaiting them in the Senate.
The final piece of the health package will be taken up under rules that protect it from a Republican filibuster, but Senate Republicans can raise multiple objections under a complicated set of rules written by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) more than 35 years ago.
"One of the things we've been working on is to make sure that we comply with the Byrd rule, and do comply with the reconciliation requirements, and we believe we've done that," Hoyer said.
Hoyer told reporters the legislation is "the largest deficit-reduction bill that members will have a chance to vote on" in most of their congressional careers -- a key enticement for a bloc of undecided Democratic lawmakers who fear that the legislation would run up the mounting federal deficit.
The package contains "more deficit reduction than both the Senate bill and the House bill," Pelosi said. "This is really a triumph for the American people in terms of deficit reduction."
But Republicans said the CBO's score of the bill didn't make it any more palatable. "We're still going to spend a trillion dollars so we impose government-run health care on the American people," said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).
"The American people want no part of it." Democrats posted the text of the legislation on the Web site of the House Rules Committee on Thursday. Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) said he would begin asking wavering lawmakers for firm commitments soon after it was made public.
Pelosi declined to say whether she has the 216 votes needed to push the measure to final passage. But with the conversion of the first "no" vote and the announcement of support from two anti-abortion Democrats on Wednesday, House leaders pronounced themselves increasingly optimistic that they will deliver the package for Obama's signature this weekend.
Hoyer said the one-on-one lobbying campaign Obama has conducted in recent days has had an effect.
"He's been working members very hard," Hoyer said.
At a rally kicking off the final effort to secure votes, Pelosi denied that Obama's move to stay in Washington was needed to secure House support but was based more on his wanting to be on hand for the Senate's consideration of the amendments package next week.
"This is historical. I'm sure he wants to be here for the history," she told reporters afterward.
With blue and yellow charts behind her -- showing $138 billion in deficit savings over the first 10 years after enactment and $1.2 trillion more in the next 10 years -- Pelosi said her caucus could be secure in knowing the fiscal impact.
"We feel very strong about where we are," she said.
A separate piece of legislation, amending that sweeping health-care bill, would be taken up next week in the Senate, where key switches need to be made to the legislation's provisions on the federal subsidies and tax credits that will finance the measure.
The cost of the final compromise bill is $940 billion over the next decade, significantly more than the $875 billion Senate bill, but less than the $1.05 trillion measure the House passed in November.
The compromise is expected to offer more generous subsidies than the Senate bill to people who can't afford to buy insurance, to fully close the coverage gap known as the doughnut hole in the Medicare prescription drug program and delay implementation of the Senate's tax on high-cost insurance policies until 2018. The package is also expected to enact another of Obama's top domestic priorities, a dramatic expansion of the federal student loan program.
..the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively
